1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive enclosure, and in particular, to a disk drive enclosure with a disk holder.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, disks to be used in a disk drive are stored in a separate disk holder. However, using a separate disk holder is inconvenient if a small number of disks are used mostly, especially when the disk holder is not placed in the vicinity of the disk drive enclosure.
One embodiment of the present invention is to provide a disk drive enclosure with a disk holder provided as an integral part of the enclosure. Thus, for example, one embodiment of the present invention includes a disk drive enclosure comprising a top panel and a disk holder for holding disk products. One aspect of the present invention is a disk holder provided on the top panel as an integral part of the enclosure. The disk holder has a shape for receiving and fitting thereto a side of each disk product. Thus, in one embodiment, a user who uses a disk drive (e.g., an optical disk drive) can handle disk products easily and efficiently, without using a separate disk holder.
The disk holder may be constituted by grooves, slots, continuous ridges, discontinuous ridges, and/or a plurality of projections. The direction of holding disk products can be parallel to the front panel, parallel to the side panels, or offset, depending on the target user""s preference. The offset direction may be such that the proximal end of the disk product is directed toward the right (or the left) of a user who is right-handed (or left-handed). The disk products can be held vertically on the top panel or slanted toward the user in view of ease of handling disk products. The disk product can be a disk itself, a hard case thereof, and a soft case thereof.